Dom Sacco provides a quick recap of this week’s UK League of Legends matches in the ESL Premiership.
The first game of the evening (Twitch VoD here) saw the two newcomers to the Premiership face-off: league leaders XENEX and promising organisation Cyclone.
The first game was one of the more exciting matches we’ve seen this split in the ESL Prem.
It was neck-and-neck for most of the first game, with plenty of skirmishes and close-call fights. It was 15-15 before the halfway mark, but a frantic team fight near the end finished with a quadra kill from XENEX top-laner Shikari (as Fiora) to ace Cyclone and close it out.
Cyclone’s new mid-laner Ripi also performed well as Orianna, going 6/2/9.
A close match, but @teamxenex are just too strong! @ShikariLoL is out for blood and they take the win! #ESLPremhttps://t.co/Xvxm85ZUk7 pic.twitter.com/DtB8DHja7p
— ESL United Kingdom (@ESLUK) February 15, 2017
In game two, Cyclone started off brightly, going 2-0 up by the 10-minute mark, with kills from top-laner kerberos and jungler Demo.
However, XENEX fought back to soon take a 4-2 lead. By 25 minutes it was 11-10 to XENEX in what was another close-fought game.
In this game it was the other mid-laner’s turn to impress, with XENEX mid-laner buckland going 6/2/4 as LeBlanc. ADC Innaxe also put in some serious damage as a Lethality-focused Miss Fortune with a 7/4/10 individual score.
While XENEX won game two 20-15, the two wins perhaps don’t reflect how close the match was for the most part, and it could have easily been 1-1. But XENEX showed the mark of champions and got the 2-0.
Bulldog played against Paria in the other streamed game of the evening.
Bottom-of-the-league Paria were playing for pride as we entered the second half of the split, and they did fight hard this game, going 12-11 down before the 20-minute mark.
Eventually, Bulldog broke through and ended up winning 20-15 with an 11k gold lead in the first game, and a more convincing 22-7 in game two.
No miracle tonight! @TeamParia fall to @BulldogeSports 2-0! #ESLPremhttps://t.co/Xvxm85ZUk7 pic.twitter.com/dQdQtJ8gx7
— ESL United Kingdom (@ESLUK) February 15, 2017
Elsewhere, GLB drew 1-1 with MnM, and Excel drew with Enclave 1-1.
The standings after week five’s matches are as follows (credit: ESL UK website):
The top four are really starting to take shape now, with Enclave, Bulldog, GLB and Cyclone fighting to break into the top four.
Only the top two will progress to the LAN finals.
Further reading: Check out Prosfair’s special mid-season report for Esports News UK.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
